One Battle After Another (2025)
Directed by: Paul Thomas Anderson
Premise: Inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland. A former revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) lives an anonymous life and raises his daughter (Chase Infiniti). Years later, government agents flush them out of hiding.
What Works: Filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent films have resembled the works of Robert Altman. The Master, Inherent Vice, and Licorice Pizza were less focused on plot and more invested in exploring characters and communities. Anderson takes a very different approach with One Battle After Another. It’s his most accessible film since There Will Be Blood and Anderson merges his interest in character with the form of a Hollywood action picture. The result is a breathless work of cinema. One Battle After Another runs 161 minutes but it is so fast and so energetic that the picture feels half that length. Despite its serious subject matter, the movie is very funny in a way that’s humanizing. The craftsmanship is superb especially the camera movement and the editing. The climactic car chase uses low camera placement and the rolling hills in a way that is kinetic and disorienting. It’s also a very well-designed film. The costumes and sets have a lived-in look. The world of Once Battle After Another creates an impression of authenticity that’s convincing. While working as an exercise in action and suspense, One Battle After Another also allows room for characterization and the film has several terrific performances. Leonardo DiCaprio plays the lead as a revolutionary who finds himself a single father. In other roles DiCaprio typically alternates between suaveness and violent anger but in One Battle After Another he’s allowed to be funny in a self-effacing way. Teyana Taylor plays the partner of DiCaprio’s character and the mother of his child. Although she exits the story early, Taylor makes an impression that hovers over the entire film. Sean Penn is the villainous colonel and Penn brings the character to life with a distinct gait.
What Doesn’t: One Battle After Another is not a political film in the sense of The Battle of the Algiers or Born in Flames or even Fight Club. There’s no underlying philosophy here. This is a story about revolutionaries but the politics of the movie itself are not particularly radical. The filmmaker’s sympathies are with the revolutionaries and the story does pose law enforcement and the military as the villains but that is as deep as it goes. There is no interrogation of what these people believe or why or their larger goals. These revolutionaries are violent and the filmmakers never address the morality or efficacy of those tactics. This is a Hollywood version of revolution, on par with 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, and it sidesteps any difficult or challenging ideas in favor of the adrenaline rush of the chase.
Bottom Line: One Battle After Another is a masterful work of suspense with great performances. The film’s politics are rather muted and simplistic but One Battle After Another is extraordinarily well made.
Episode: #1066 (September 28, 2025)